Yolky’s Adventure

Yolky’s Adventure – a Real to Cyber Adventure from Offline to Online

I sometimes feel lonely way out here in the far suburbs of Los Angeles – Riverside – Orange Counties. There are no street lights here in what used to be nice fresh air, but now filled with smog. Being inland about 70 miles from Los Angeles and San Diego has also lost the advantage of far less traffic than LA. But I guess its better than the cold winters elsewhere in the USA.

Just Who is Yolky?

Yolky’s adventure is about a senior duck, oops I mean senior citizen, in a world filled with younger ducks, especially on the internet.

Charles “Yolky” Harmon

Yolky is actually Charles Harmon. Younger ducks everywhere on the internet don’t phase Yolky since he started using the internet when it was new.

Besides that, software and computers were his career. That started way back in the early 60s when it was all new.

He had his first full-time job creating small electronic sub-assemblies for computers. That very quickly blossomed out into electronics then computer programming.

Why Yolky; how did that silly name come about?

Way back in 2004 I had been reading about domains from a website. They implied a domain goldrush was happening. Sort of like the gold rush of 1849 over 100 years ago. That website thought there would be a rush in registering a good domain name.

I thought they probably had it right. There might be sort of a rush of the best domain names being gobbled up by domain investors. I figured that since a domain name could only be owned by one person or a single company, eventually the best ones would be registered rather quickly.

So as someone interested in the web, but with little experience, I blindly registered some 700 domains. It was over a period of about two years. This essentially started Yolky’s adventure online. Two of those domains I actually paid to get through a service selling dropped domains. That is, domains where people didn’t renew their domain registration.

I bought and registered yolky.com and another domain, I believe was waeg.com. Waeg was an old fashion English name of a bird like a seagull. I put up a small site about birds some years ago, but took it down later after having no time to maintain it.

I sold Waeg.com a couple of years ago. That original $69 investment plus registration fees turned into about a 2500% profit investment.

I had visions of yolky being a cartoon character. Later I wanted to make an anime comic strip with yolky being the main character. That never happened. I could never find an artist to do it for me. So it goes.

Some years ago I created a site about egg recipes which I had up for at least five years. A couple of years ago I took that site down and made yolky.com my main personal blog. My other personal blog is charlesharmon.com.

Back when it all Started

Back in the 60s he attended Pasadena City College (PCC) and learned programming. He learned all about computers and their applications. Yolky even got a job as a computer assembler and later as a digitizer.

In those days, in the 60s, digitizers were like drafting boards. Their output was a reel of tape which was ultimately fed into a computer program which analyzed the data.

He digitized sound wave maps of potential oil deposits in the Los Angeles area and the Alaska North Slope. Although it wasn’t his job, Yolky mingled with all the young PHDs where he worked. Most were from USC or UCLA, which he later attended for accounting and business classes.

A laser light show from the top of the most expensive building in the world. Along with laser printers there are lots of devices using lasers nowadays.

Click the image and see if you can identify the building where this light show is originating from.

Yolky got involved with laser experiments – lasers were still new inventions at the time. There were all sorts of lasers being invented in those years. It ultimately changed the potential uses of lasers in a very big way.

All that laser stuff, computer digitizing, and electronics were one thing. But it didn’t take away the fact that Yolky also took art, real estate, and some unusual subjects in college.

Yolky got the bug for real estate investing. But real estate investing took a back seat to computers and electronics. That’s because there happened to be a downturn in real estate right after his real estate classes. It wasn’t until some 15+ years later real estate would pop up again as something on his “To Do” list.

Yolky did his own thing including lots of cars

Yolky was never satisfied with the status quo, which in his case generally meant never having much extra money to do some of the things he wanted – like take long vacations, get that Porsche 911 Targa in the early 80s he always wanted, or pursue drawing and painting, which was his first of several majors in college.

He substituted long vacations with long periods off of work and in later years, as a consultant programmer which afforded him much time off.

1965 Corvette Sting Ray Coupe – virtually the same as my 1963 Fuel Injected Corvette I had for 11 years back in the 60s-70s.

He never had expensive new cars, but substituted other new and used cars.

Cars like his 63 Corvette stingray, his 69 Corvette Stingray, and his 89 Corvette Stingray. His German cars, his Porsche 924, his 97 BMW 328i convertible , and his 89 BMW 735i. There were also other assorted cars, some 25+ cars and trucks in total.

Amateur Radio and Real Estate held his Interests

He never had expensive houses, but instead substituted a half dozen “no money down” houses. There was a no money down home, and his current home, a potential no money down home, or so he thought.

My home, where I live now wasn’t bought as an investment. It cost 4 times what my first home cost. But nevertheless, it has turned out to be an investment now worth over 14 times more than the cost of my original home.

Unfortunately the VA required some $30,000 down in lieu of the typical no money down VA home purchase.

A few of his real estate adventures are elaborated briefly within. Real estate is an ongoing, albeit slowly at the current time, effort that still excites Yolky today.

Way back when, long before the internet, Yolky had his own shortwave radio station. It was an amateur radio station where he talked to people around the world. He even managed to operate his own secret communications truck during his stint in the Army Paratroopers.

A few years before, in high school, Yolky and another amateur radio operator operated the school’s electronic repair shop. They also both operated the school’s amateur radio station. It seems as though they were the only two students plus one administrator that had such licenses to operate the school’s shortwave station.

Electronics and the Internet

Part of Yolky’s adventure was electronics. He was good in electronics. Yolky managed to get a lifetime Radio operator’s 1st Class RadioTelephone License (no longer issued) from the Federal Government. That allowed him to operate any radio or TV station transmitter in the United States.

Although on the web before 2004, it was then that Yolky decided to find out whether one could actually make money using the internet.

He spent two years of part-time searching the internet for what he thought legitimate ways to make money.

Yolky came to the conclusion it was possible, but probably not very easy due to all the supposed opportunities. Plus the internet was changing rapidly.The internet was changing so fast. It made it more difficult to know what worked and what not to waste money and time pursuing.

Overwhelmed with lots of Domain Names

The one thing Yolky was fairly sure about was the idea that domain names would become a lot more expensive. That’s because only one person or company can have a specific domain name. That alone would create scarcity driving the prices of domain names up.

That has happened over the years since then. Generally domain names have gone up in price. However, over two million domain names expire each year making it difficult to sell domains. That’s regardless of what one thinks they are worth.

So investing in domains is a risky business for most people. As a result of that, and interest in lots of other things, Yolky does not try to sell his small stash of domain names as a business. He doesn’t count on domains to provide any cash flow. Both of these things, however, could be done, but require a lot of work and time. That’s something Yolky cannot put in at the current time.

This is Yolky’s online semi-journal, expose, or whatever you want to call it. You’ll read about some of Yolky’s adventure and experiences, good and bad, worthwhile or not. Somewhere in here there just may be a few words of wisdom or something that catches your interest.

Generally most of Yolky’s experiences in recent years have been in internet marketing in one way or another. That includes most of the remainder of the domain names he purchased over the years since 2004. Along with those domain names involved putting up dozens of websites for himself and a few for others.

Lots of Websites but mostly as a means to an end (sell the domains)

Overall for Yolky, putting up websites, to his dismay, was generally a losing proposition. There are exceptions, but Yolky has not experienced those exceptions himself.

Most of the time there is a lot of time involved in putting up a website, even if one uses WordPress or a similar CMS system.

In Yolky’s experience it is very difficult to find individuals who can afford to pay to have a website created. Some people are not willing to pay reasonable labor costs for a website.

However, if you have good business contacts then the situation is entirely different. Unfortunately for Yolky, he does not have good business contacts (yet).

It is possible, however, to get people to pay much smaller amounts for custom web pages, (click birthday image on left for an example page). That’s especially true if one uses services such as fiverr to promote their services or products.

AnyDriver.com is an excellent domain name for anyone wanting to make money with CPA offers. Specifically related to vehicle insurance this domain could make the right person a lot of money. Hey wait a minute! Anyone knowledgeable about car insurance CPA offers? Contact me. Maybe we can make a deal where we partner up together with a CPA site. I’ll create one and you point me to profitable traffic sources. We’ll split the profits. Contact me from any of my sites.

But in most cases you still don’t get paid adequately for all the labor involved. The example page I created took more than a couple of hours to create.

That’s considering finding and editing the images and writing the text.

At my current rates that would be $150 or more for just that single page.